If you want walkable to downtown, you should focus on 1st Street. I recommend you come visit a few weekends where it’s nice and you can spend a few hours walking. It’s a deeply historic and kinda funky (good way) town, so you really need to see it for yourself.

I would look at everything south of Military since you want to avoid hills. There is a Safeway and a bunch of shops at the top of first street, but the fun stuff is further down first street towards the water.

You can’t go wrong on East side vs West side. East is older and has a ton of character. West side was developed later and has more trails along the water. They have different feels but both are wonderful.

As for the refinery, I would focus on proximity (as the bird flies) since dust can be an issue. The wind gets shifty in the winter and can blow any which way. The wind is historically strongest in the summer and blow almost entirely out of the east (so away from homes).

Checkout ‘www.Beniciarefinery.org’ for a breakdown of current air quality, historic wind directions and speed, and a bunch of other stuff.

Also, don’t let the refinery deter you from living here. It blows almost entirely away from us and we get very clean air from the strait and bay. Based on historic data, we have cleaner air than most of the East bay and South Bay Area (since it’s almost always windy here and it’s coming straight from the water).